And you'll note that AT&T is excluded from the do-not-call law....
AT&T local service used to bombard me with three and four phone calls per day. I repeatedly informed them that I had DSL, and was thus ineligible, and asked to not be called again, and was told repeatedly that I'd be added to their do-not-call list, only to find myself getting more calls than before.
Here's how I solved the problem:
First, I called my long distance customer service number and informed them that I would cancel my long distance coverage unless they stopped calling. They told me that they couldn't help, and that I needed to call another number.
That number turned out to be the AT&T local service sales number. I tried to find out if they did their own calling or paid someone else to do it,but the guy wouldn't answer. The guy then began asking for lots of personal information. I finally asked why they needed that information to file a complaint, whereupon they said that this, too, was the wrong number to call. (What part of "I want to file a complaint" didn't the guy understand? How exactly did he get "I want your local service" from that?) Anyway, they gave me yet another number, but that the number was basically only open on weekdays,
I ignored the guy's warning about it being only open on weekdays, figuring that anybody who interpreted an "I'm not eligible, so stop calling me" complaint as an "I want to get your service" request was so clueless that he probably didn't know what was going on. Unsurprisingly, I was right.
So the number I ended up talking to was AT&T Local Services customer support. I had "the talk", as it is now infamously known, with the service rep, and he apologized profusely and agreed to put me on the do-not-call list.
To date, I have not received any more calls. I guess tying up AT&T's 1-800 numbers for almost two hours and threatening to drop my long distance service if they didn't stop harassing me was enough to convince them that maybe I really didn't want their local service....
That having been said, I think they're only excluded from the DNC law if they are your current long distance provider, so if they annoy you too much, tell them that from now on, "You're not dealing with AT&T" and see what they say.:-)
However, the SEI is introducing Team Process Software (TPS), which brings traceability of specific code modules to individual programmers, said Humphrey, a former IBM software engineering executive. Indian software companies and a few U.S. developers, notably Microsoft Corp., are aggressively implementing TPS.
To which my immediate reply was, "Did you remember to include the right cover on your TPS report?":-)
You think people who have amassed the financial resources to confront the RIAA have time to sit around and download music?
No, but their kids might.
Never underestimate the protectiveness of a billionaire parent or the embarrassment of inadvertently suing the child of a recording industry executive....
Sure there was. I can disassemble---maybe even decompile---a piece of software today, too. Does that mean I can get the source code? No. I have a source code, and a hard-to-read one at that. If you haven't ever tried to follow the code paths in an uncommented piece of assembly code, you should try it some time....
And since this story seems to be largely about Woz, it's worth noting that in the early ROM designs, he reportedly wrote code that interleaved data and instructions in such a way that when you called it at a different offset, you'd get an entirely different subroutine, treating what was previously data as code and vice-versa to save space.
Trying to understand that sort of code without SERIOUS code comments would be like trying to navigate through a minefield blindfolded, with your hands tied behind your back and a small child incessantly shouting "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" in your ear.
So no, even with hand-tuned assembly, there can be a big difference between the source and the executable....:-)
Well, I can name a bunch that potentially could have, but didn't, due to miscalculations and/or intervention. Like the WTC bombing back a decade or so ago. Not quite a big enough kaboom, but had the explosion been just a little more powerful, it would have. Same goes for the bombing in Oklahoma City, the pipe bombs in Columbine, the shoe bomber (well, not a thousand, but hundreds), the thwarted pipe bomb incident at De Anza College (right here in the middle of the Silicon Valley area).... The list is practically endless.
Now, if you mean non-domestic terrorist attacks, and if by "U.S. soil", you mean the United States proper, that would solely be the two WTC attacks, one successful, one not. Of course that discounts embassy bombings, terrorist attacks in U.S. territories overseas, etc., all of which are technically "U.S. soil".
So yes, the parent poster was right in saying there is a terrorist attack on the U.S. every few years. Really, more often than that....
Actually, the larger dishes for DSS produce a weaker signal because they use an almost identical surface area to bounce signals from three satellites instead of one. (Note that the small dishes with two satellites are probably worse than the large dishes with three, but I don't see many of those around.)
That having been said, if you really lose it in a "weak rainstorm", then your installer didn't do a very good job or you have something physically blocking the signal. In most parts of the U.S., you should get at least a 70% signal with a triple dish, 80% with a single (or thereabouts). Anything over a 30% signal or so should not result in dropouts, so there's a -large- margin, nearby tree limbs notwithstanding.
I've been through beating rain and high winds and my TiVo was recording at the time. I've only seen one single momentary outage (about a half second on the audio, a couple seconds for the video decoder to catch an I-frame) in two years. Of course, I mounted the dish myself (the free "professional" installer never contacted me, and after a couple of weeks, I said "screw them, I'll do it myself").
By contrast, back when I lived in Tennessee, most of the local stations were microwaved in for a stronger signal with shorter towers. With a slight wind, the towers would tip enough to drop the signal out constantly. Satellite channels were just about as bad.
The point is that if you want a solid signal, buy a dish (small, large, 30 foot uplink/downlink, whatever) and install it yourself so that you know it was done right. Mount it solidly into studs (or for a larger dish, concrete) using as many screws or bolts as possible, and you'll be much happier.:-)
I think Drew Carey put it best with a line that was something along the lines of "I'd get [the porn channel], but I already get Disney, and if you get them both together, they put you on some kind of list."
Tapes are so expensive that it usually makes a lot more sense to have a synchronized backup server in another city as Aeneas did. Of course, this doesn't protect you from accidental deletions, etc., but customers that need that level of protection also pay higher rates to cover the extra backup expenses....
Sounds like the biggest problem they had was that they didn't have similar backup capabilities for their administrative data or enough server horsepower at the backup site to carry the load. Compared to what would happen to most small ISPs in such a situation, that's nothing short of miraculous.:-)
Sounds like you've been away too long. I lived only an hour from there in Martin (the home town of the CIO of Aeneas). It's not that bad. The other ISPs I know about are:
local schools and universities (faculty only)
ISWT
AT&T
Charter Cable
DSL (in some areas, not sure what provider)
It's not that backwoods, and Martin's a town of 8,000 or so. Jackson is a good sized city (about 250,000 people in the Jackson metro area, 87k or so in the city proper) with a decent infrastructure. It's no Silicon Valley, mind you, but it's not anywhere near as bad as that....
You can't just "deplete" something of radioactivity. It is called that because most of the gamma-radiation-generating materials have been leached out for use in weapons or fuel rods. That doesn't mean it isn't radioactive. It's just less radioactive than unprocessed uranium out of the ground.
The health danger is largely from ingestion or inhalation of small particulate uranium resulting from its use. If you get enough of it in your body, it can cause problems.
I think you generalize way too much about the RIAA. That organization does a lot more than just sue people.
They are involved in standardization of audio formats.
They administering the CD track code system (ISRC) for U.S. companies.
They handle statutory licensing for webcasters.
They contribute to the National Endowment for the Arts to improve music education in our nation's schools.
While I won't disagree that the RIAA does some things that are, frankly, ethically and morally despicable, they do perform a lot of useful functions. Thus, it's important to distinguish between the actions of the RIAA's current leadership and the actions of the organization as a whole. A lot of folks don't like their leadership. That doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The right way to fix things is to work within the system by writing letters to artists, studios, etc. and tell THEM that what the RIAA is doing is wrong. Tell them WHY. Give then alternatives and try to convince them that those alternatives won't bankrupt them. If you convince enough of those sorts of people that there are better ways to promote music sales, the leadership of the RIAA will get replaced over time by people who actually "get it".
Attempting to change the RIAA in any other way is just going to end up keeping lawyers off the streets and spending a lot of money doing it.:-)
Wow, 2.8224 MHz. After all, what would a concert recording be like if it couldn't accurately reproduce the entire AM radio band, at least one HAM radio band, the WWV time signal, the WWVB time signal, and half the maritime and aviation bands along with the musical performance?
Actually, there is a market for it. Two, in fact. First, low-G scientific experiments. Second, satellite launches. They already do this with the shuttle---using a booster rocket to kick the thing into a higher geosync orbit. Think of the RSV as a reusable, manned launch platform for satellites. If it could be done in a way that was totally reusable without major refurbishing, it would be a lot cheaper to launch than a Saturn V or something.
Of course, the (disposable) booster stage would be much bigger and more costly than what they use now, but it still might be a win... emphasis on might.:-)
According the courts (and rightly so), "Product A is better than product B" is an opinion. By definition, opinions cannot be false. Product B's company can no more sue for libel because someone felt their product was better than a movie company could after a reviewer said "It stinks".
There's a reason that this sort of speech is protected....
On an informal level, the same goes for the U.S. courts, at least with respect to British decisions. One could assume that it also acts that way with respect to other EU member decisions. They're not binding precedent, but they may, at the judge's discretion, be considered as evidence of wrongdoing.
However, in this case, it is unclear whether the German court decision would make sense outside of Germany. At least in the U.S., you can't have "prior restraint" in publication except in extreme cases (significant national security risk, for example), which means that while the court could order them to remove existing content, it could not prevent them from adding new content. Thus, assuming they removed the existing potentially libelous statements, the court could not find them in contempt for adding new potentially libelous statements.
If that's really true, then those guys have no business designing ANY piece of technology. Look, it's simple. Wings inside the craft that pop out and lock just prior to reentry. It's aerodynamically stable on launch and still gives you the benefits of having a large surface area to create drag for a smoother landing. Heck, if you do it right, you pop the wings out part way down so you can have a full set of flaps on the thing and literally land it like an airplane on a normal runway. If the problem is the flat side, just launch two at once, back to back.
There are too many seemingly obvious solutions to the problems with space technology for me to believe that the current state of affairs is caused by anything but a combination of politics and a bunch of government contractors that don't want to obsolete themselves.... *sigh*
You mean kind of like Mac OS X does? From the docs on OpenDarwin:
The Property List
Each startup item bundle contains a property list file at the root level named StartupParameters.plist. The property list is an XML or NeXT-style text file that describes the contents of the bundle. It enumerates the services the bundle prov ides, the services the bundle requires, and other information useful for determining the proper order of execution of the bundles.
The property list contains the following attributes:
OPEN CURLY BRACE Description = "My Startup Item"; Provides = "MyService"; Requires = ("AnotherService", "Network",...); Uses = ("YetAnotherService,...); OrderPreferece = "time"; Messages EQUALS OPEN CURLY BRACE start = "Starting My Item."; stop = "Stopping My Item."; restart = "Restarting My Item."; CLOSE CURLY BRACE CLOSE CURLY BRACE
Apologies for the EQUALS, OPEN CURLY BRACE, and CLOSE CURLY BRACE, but Slashdot considers them to be 'junk'. Oddly enough, it also thinks double quotes are junk. Talk about encouraging plagiarism.
Here's a modest proposal: if somebody has a Karma bonus, it should be clear that the person doesn't post intentional trolls or other useless crap. Don't subject those of us who actually try to consistently post useful information to these sorts of stupid filters. It only ends up preventing us from being helpful and informative and leads to the decline of the signal-to-noise ratio that it was designed to improve.
Re:Some thoughts on future virus and worm attacks.
on
Blaster Writer Caught
·
· Score: 1
I'm suddenly reminded of a fake advertisement for "Virus Toolkit" in the book "Virus!" from the late 80s or early 90s. The book, which was a rather good read, talked about the history of certain viruses, worms, etc. including a long section on the first internet worm (Remember Robert Morris Jr.?) and how it did what it did. Anyway....
Actually, it still makes a lot of sense. She's looking out of her balcony. It would make just as much sense for her to gaze out into the darkness and ask where Romeo is as it would to ask why his name is Romeo. I rather suspect Shakespeare chose that word maliciously as an "almost double-entendre" of sorts, i.e. as a sort of word play to surprise the audience. Anyway....
And what do G5's have to do with boring holes in wood or ice, anyways?
First, you turn on the G5. Then you simultaneously run both the iTunes visualizer and a script that does multiple Photoshop transforms on an image. Next, you run a game to stress the GPU. Finally, you point the exhaust openings down at the ice....
Autotune should not give similar results at all. The technologies work in entirely different ways.
A vocoder generates a fixed frequency wave (pulse, sine, whatever) at the correct pitch and then modulates that wave with the input signal. The result is that when the input frequency changes, you hear a very sudden, abrupt change in the output pitch, much like the voice is being generated by a music keyboard. From a pitch perspective, it basically is.
A pitch correction does a frequency estimator on the original input signal, then determines the nearest correct frequency for a valid note in the current key, determines how far to shift it towards the correct pitch (you don't shift it all the way to avoid flattening vibrato completely), and finally uses a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to actually shift a chunk of audio up or down in pitch the appropriate amount.
Vocoding is to pitch correction as AM Radio is to Ogg Vorbis. Yeah, they both end up doing similar things when viewed at a high level, but they do them in such radically different ways that they don't sound anything alike.
Slashdot Mirror
AT&T local service used to bombard me with three and four phone calls per day. I repeatedly informed them that I had DSL, and was thus ineligible, and asked to not be called again, and was told repeatedly that I'd be added to their do-not-call list, only to find myself getting more calls than before.
Here's how I solved the problem:
First, I called my long distance customer service number and informed them that I would cancel my long distance coverage unless they stopped calling. They told me that they couldn't help, and that I needed to call another number.
That number turned out to be the AT&T local service sales number. I tried to find out if they did their own calling or paid someone else to do it,but the guy wouldn't answer. The guy then began asking for lots of personal information. I finally asked why they needed that information to file a complaint, whereupon they said that this, too, was the wrong number to call. (What part of "I want to file a complaint" didn't the guy understand? How exactly did he get "I want your local service" from that?) Anyway, they gave me yet another number, but that the number was basically only open on weekdays,
I ignored the guy's warning about it being only open on weekdays, figuring that anybody who interpreted an "I'm not eligible, so stop calling me" complaint as an "I want to get your service" request was so clueless that he probably didn't know what was going on. Unsurprisingly, I was right.
So the number I ended up talking to was AT&T Local Services customer support. I had "the talk", as it is now infamously known, with the service rep, and he apologized profusely and agreed to put me on the do-not-call list.
To date, I have not received any more calls. I guess tying up AT&T's 1-800 numbers for almost two hours and threatening to drop my long distance service if they didn't stop harassing me was enough to convince them that maybe I really didn't want their local service....
That having been said, I think they're only excluded from the DNC law if they are your current long distance provider, so if they annoy you too much, tell them that from now on, "You're not dealing with AT&T" and see what they say. :-)
&lt;rant&gt; == <rant>
right?
Yikes, we'd better stop this. At this rate, the reply to this will be eerily long....
However, the SEI is introducing Team Process Software (TPS), which brings traceability of specific code modules to individual programmers, said Humphrey, a former IBM software engineering executive. Indian software companies and a few U.S. developers, notably Microsoft Corp., are aggressively implementing TPS.
To which my immediate reply was, "Did you remember to include the right cover on your TPS report?" :-)
No, but their kids might.
Never underestimate the protectiveness of a billionaire parent or the embarrassment of inadvertently suing the child of a recording industry executive....
And since this story seems to be largely about Woz, it's worth noting that in the early ROM designs, he reportedly wrote code that interleaved data and instructions in such a way that when you called it at a different offset, you'd get an entirely different subroutine, treating what was previously data as code and vice-versa to save space.
Trying to understand that sort of code without SERIOUS code comments would be like trying to navigate through a minefield blindfolded, with your hands tied behind your back and a small child incessantly shouting "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" in your ear.
So no, even with hand-tuned assembly, there can be a big difference between the source and the executable.... :-)
Now, if you mean non-domestic terrorist attacks, and if by "U.S. soil", you mean the United States proper, that would solely be the two WTC attacks, one successful, one not. Of course that discounts embassy bombings, terrorist attacks in U.S. territories overseas, etc., all of which are technically "U.S. soil".
So yes, the parent poster was right in saying there is a terrorist attack on the U.S. every few years. Really, more often than that....
Are negative time values legal?
That having been said, if you really lose it in a "weak rainstorm", then your installer didn't do a very good job or you have something physically blocking the signal. In most parts of the U.S., you should get at least a 70% signal with a triple dish, 80% with a single (or thereabouts). Anything over a 30% signal or so should not result in dropouts, so there's a -large- margin, nearby tree limbs notwithstanding.
I've been through beating rain and high winds and my TiVo was recording at the time. I've only seen one single momentary outage (about a half second on the audio, a couple seconds for the video decoder to catch an I-frame) in two years. Of course, I mounted the dish myself (the free "professional" installer never contacted me, and after a couple of weeks, I said "screw them, I'll do it myself").
By contrast, back when I lived in Tennessee, most of the local stations were microwaved in for a stronger signal with shorter towers. With a slight wind, the towers would tip enough to drop the signal out constantly. Satellite channels were just about as bad.
The point is that if you want a solid signal, buy a dish (small, large, 30 foot uplink/downlink, whatever) and install it yourself so that you know it was done right. Mount it solidly into studs (or for a larger dish, concrete) using as many screws or bolts as possible, and you'll be much happier. :-)
Sounds like the biggest problem they had was that they didn't have similar backup capabilities for their administrative data or enough server horsepower at the backup site to carry the load. Compared to what would happen to most small ISPs in such a situation, that's nothing short of miraculous. :-)
- local schools and universities (faculty only)
- ISWT
- AT&T
- Charter Cable
- DSL (in some areas, not sure what provider)
It's not that backwoods, and Martin's a town of 8,000 or so. Jackson is a good sized city (about 250,000 people in the Jackson metro area, 87k or so in the city proper) with a decent infrastructure. It's no Silicon Valley, mind you, but it's not anywhere near as bad as that....The health danger is largely from ingestion or inhalation of small particulate uranium resulting from its use. If you get enough of it in your body, it can cause problems.
- They are involved in standardization of audio formats.
- They administering the CD track code system (ISRC) for U.S. companies.
- They handle statutory licensing for webcasters.
- They contribute to the National Endowment for the Arts to improve music education in our nation's schools.
While I won't disagree that the RIAA does some things that are, frankly, ethically and morally despicable, they do perform a lot of useful functions. Thus, it's important to distinguish between the actions of the RIAA's current leadership and the actions of the organization as a whole. A lot of folks don't like their leadership. That doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.The right way to fix things is to work within the system by writing letters to artists, studios, etc. and tell THEM that what the RIAA is doing is wrong. Tell them WHY. Give then alternatives and try to convince them that those alternatives won't bankrupt them. If you convince enough of those sorts of people that there are better ways to promote music sales, the leadership of the RIAA will get replaced over time by people who actually "get it".
Attempting to change the RIAA in any other way is just going to end up keeping lawyers off the streets and spending a lot of money doing it. :-)
And I thought the 96 KHz zealots were nuts....
Of course, the (disposable) booster stage would be much bigger and more costly than what they use now, but it still might be a win... emphasis on might. :-)
There's a reason that this sort of speech is protected....
However, in this case, it is unclear whether the German court decision would make sense outside of Germany. At least in the U.S., you can't have "prior restraint" in publication except in extreme cases (significant national security risk, for example), which means that while the court could order them to remove existing content, it could not prevent them from adding new content. Thus, assuming they removed the existing potentially libelous statements, the court could not find them in contempt for adding new potentially libelous statements.
There are too many seemingly obvious solutions to the problems with space technology for me to believe that the current state of affairs is caused by anything but a combination of politics and a bunch of government contractors that don't want to obsolete themselves.... *sigh*
Here's a modest proposal: if somebody has a Karma bonus, it should be clear that the person doesn't post intentional trolls or other useless crap. Don't subject those of us who actually try to consistently post useful information to these sorts of stupid filters. It only ends up preventing us from being helpful and informative and leads to the decline of the signal-to-noise ratio that it was designed to improve.
First, you turn on the G5. Then you simultaneously run both the iTunes visualizer and a script that does multiple Photoshop transforms on an image. Next, you run a game to stress the GPU. Finally, you point the exhaust openings down at the ice....
A vocoder generates a fixed frequency wave (pulse, sine, whatever) at the correct pitch and then modulates that wave with the input signal. The result is that when the input frequency changes, you hear a very sudden, abrupt change in the output pitch, much like the voice is being generated by a music keyboard. From a pitch perspective, it basically is.
A pitch correction does a frequency estimator on the original input signal, then determines the nearest correct frequency for a valid note in the current key, determines how far to shift it towards the correct pitch (you don't shift it all the way to avoid flattening vibrato completely), and finally uses a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to actually shift a chunk of audio up or down in pitch the appropriate amount.
Vocoding is to pitch correction as AM Radio is to Ogg Vorbis. Yeah, they both end up doing similar things when viewed at a high level, but they do them in such radically different ways that they don't sound anything alike.